“Better give it a moment,” Tibal drawled. “Wouldn’t want anyone seeing us come out right after.”
“Right.”
“Or you could tell me where we’re going, and it’ll look even less suspicious, us waiting to leave one right after the other.”
There it was. The challenge she’d felt was coming since he’d given her that hard look while she bundled Honey off with Enard. She straightened the lay of her robe’s tie. “Better if we stick together, in case of trouble. Two sets of hands are better than one.”
“You expecting trouble?”
She held her arms out in a gesture that illustrated just how ridiculous she currently looked. “You seen me lately? I’d half expect the watchers to pick me up to evaluate my mental health if I were walking around alone.”
He snorted. “And if we get separated?”
Well then. She didn’t have anything to answer to that, aside from the fact that she feared that he’d fake separation just to get away from her. But subterfuge was Detan’s game, and she was tired of being on delicate footing with Tibal.
“Would I ever see you again?”
He blinked at her, real slow, the most surprised expression she’d ever seen on his weathered face. Took him a moment to register she wasn’t fencing with him any more: she’d laid the tension between them bare at his feet and bade him have a long look. So he did, in his own mind, tugging on his whiskery mustache with one hand while he thought. It occurred to her then that he hadn’t shaved since the Remnant.
“What’s for me, there?”
“You know what,” she said, unable to hide her frustration. “I’m trying to do right by this city. Trying to keep it from falling into the same pit Aransa did. We have a chance here. We’re prepared. To walk away now… I could never live with myself.” And I don’t think you could either, she didn’t say, but the words stretched out between them anyway. Some things didn’t need to be said to be clear as a spring rain.
“City’s not my responsibility.”
“Isn’t it, Tibal Honding?”
His head snapped back, those dark eyes narrowing, and for just a moment she thought she’d triggered his well-hidden temper. But no, that wasn’t anger ghosting his features. That was pain, pure and simple. She’d hit him. Hard.
“That ain’t my name.”
“The Dame seems to think it is.”
“You think everything the Dame says is gospel?”
“Convince me otherwise.”
“Not my job to put your head on straight, and we don’t have time for this nonsense.”
“I’m making time. Talk, Tibal. What in the fiery pits is your relation to the Dame?”
“Why are you so damned desperate to know?”
“Because you told me a story.” She stepped toward him. He stepped back. “Don’t you remember? At Thratia’s party, you told me all about how you and Detan met. How he stumbled across you, and you found common ground in trying to control your tempers. You earned my respect with that story, before I ever knew you. And I’m wondering now – how much of the time we shared together was based on lies? If your tempers are mirrors, then…” She let her gaze slide to the shadow of a firemount.
“You think I got the power, too?” He yanked his hat off and slapped it against his knee to clear the dust. “Woman, haven’t you been paying attention? What Detan’s got is rare, I can’t shift sel any more than the Dame can. And anyway.” He twisted the brim of his hat between his fingers, picking at the singed spot that had been Detan’s doing.
“What I told you was true.” He held up a hand to stop her asking more questions. “I wouldn’t lie to you now, and I didn’t then. You want to know what the Dame knows? Fine.” He blew air through his whiskers hard enough to make them flutter.
“Rew Honding is my father by blood, though I never met the man. Some uncle of the Dame, old feller, but my ma liked him well enough for a night and sent him along the next day. Didn’t know who he was at the time, till the Dame came along collecting any information she could about Honding bastards. Eletraia – that’s Detan’s mother – had just died and the Dame wasn’t one for birthing her own heirs. Anyway, she made a note of my existence and moved along, ma never heard from her again. But I did.
“She came by the settlement I’d ended up in after the Fleet had let me go ‘cause the war with the Catari had gone cold. Ma was doing well enough, running her tavern, and I didn’t have any taste for that work, so I’d found an engineer to take me on repairing airships.
“One day the Dame shows up, real quiet like. Came in on a small ship with just a pilot and a single guard, a man named Gatai. You’ve seen him around the palace as the keymaster, but I always suspected he was more than that.”
He tipped his head back, squinting at the sky as if he could see his past painted in the clouds. Ripka held her breath to keep from peppering him with questions. This was the most she’d ever heard him talk all at once.
“Anyway. She wasn’t dressed up fancy or anything, but I knew her, and she looked bad. Real tired. Said her heir had been in some trouble, maybe lost his sel-sense, and was rambling the Scorched a lost man. But she’d been keeping tabs on him, and he was flying straight my way. Asked me to keep an eye on him, help him pull himself together. That if she were to lose him then I was the only one of the bloodline left, and it had to be maintained. Was real animated about that. I told her to go suck gravel. But…” He sighed and shook his head. “Detan showed up the day after she left. I ain’t never seen a man so much the mirror to me before. Never met a soul who understood… Shit.”
He shoved his hat back on hard enough to cover half his forehead. “That’s what you wanted to know, anyway.”
“I didn’t know,” she said, quietly, and reached out to touch his arm lightly in comfort. He shook her off.
“Now you do, and I don’t want to hear a damned thing about it again, understood? This ain’t my city. Never going to be. I mean it, this city ain’t my responsibility.”
“Is your conscience your responsibility?”
He pursed his lips, spit on the dry ground, and grated out the words, “Wherever it is you’re going, Leshe, I’ll be there.”
Leshe. He never called her that. Captain, sometimes, and mostly Ripka. But her last name… There was only one person she knew of he consistently called by his family name, and it was, she thought, maybe the greatest honor he could hand her.
“See you there, then,” she said, and told him the way to Latia’s house – how to mark it, by its shape and its color and its position against the side of a firemount. Then she left him in the alley, stomach churning with uncertainty, to begin the circuitous route to Latia’s.
Leaving him there, not knowing for sure whether he’d come or not, was the greatest leap of faith she’d yet taken in this city. She hoped they both landed on their feet.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Detan made a point of hiding in his room as the Dread Wind approached Hond Steading. He did not want to watch the city of his birth roll into view. Did not want to stand at the prow alongside Thratia as he bore witness to whatever defense the city he’d sworn to serve with his life had mustered against her coming. Did not, most of all, want to see familiar faces in those forces, and know that they believed him on the other side of the line Thratia had carved into the whole of the Scorched.
Thratia, of course, had other plans.
“Honding.” Misol’s voice boomed as she thumped the door to his cabin with the butt of her spear. “Get your lazy ass out here.”